Motorsport
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Page 1172

To be fair Hamilton and Vettel were within two seconds of eachother for the best part of 40 laps but the fact that Hamilton didn't look even slightly likely to make an overtake for more than 5 of them is a huge issue.

Sadly they're a victim of their own success, the cars at the front of the grid are just too well designed to create competitive racing.

Wow, just watched that race. Firstly, are the FIA actually trying to increase the feeling of disinterest in F1? This has been so poorly handled.

The race reminded me in some ways of the day Barrichello gave Schumacher a race win and the crowd booed schumacher. Hamilton is a disingenuous bastard, just like Schumacher on that day, he was fully convinced over the radio that it was the deserved result but then on hearing the boos he tries to put Vettel on the top podium, what a joke.

All round, what a way to turn a potentially good battle into a turd of a race. Well done everyone involved.

AaronTurner wrote:
Wow, just watched that race. Firstly, are the FIA actually trying to increase the feeling of disinterest in F1? This has been so poorly handled.

The race reminded me in some ways of the day Barrichello gave Schumacher a race win and the crowd booed schumacher. Hamilton is a disingenuous bastard, just like Schumacher on that day, he was fully convinced over the radio that it was the deserved result but then on hearing the boos he tries to put Vettel on the top podium, what a joke.

All round, what a way to turn a potentially good battle into a turd of a race. Well done everyone involved.

Or alternatively Vettel left the track, gained an advantage and returned to the track unsafely which is against the rules and then proceeded to throw a hissy fit like a two year old while Hamilton tried to placate him.

It was as good a battle as it was going to get for many laps prior to the incident. Would it have been a good battle is Hamilton had not hit the brakes and they'd both crashed out of the race which would have been to his advantage?

It's the cars and the tracks that are the problem, not the raceday rules and the drivers.

Think it's definitely a rules problem when we punish someone for getting out of shape on a street circuit lined with walls. May as well tell them all to line up rank and file and do the parade lap and then go home at this point if we are that scared of the consequences of racing fast.

I haven't seen this incident, but when Vettel lost control and left the track, did it look like he kept his foot planted on the gas as he rejoined the track? If he did, then there's no argument. That's a desperate attempt to hold position after a fuck up. If he forced Hamilton into an evasive maneuver, then i'd deem that unsafe. That's a pretty reasonable penalty. Easily avoided by not fucking up.

Having said that, it's been a pretty boring season from what I have seen. Rules aren't going to fix that. The sport has had this issue since 2005, when everybody starting complaining about the difficulty of following other cars. How has it been 14 years and that issue still exists? Even seasons we remember being great since then have been plagued with a lack of overtaking or difficult overtaking. The championships may have been exciting from a points perspective, but from a racing perspective it's been broken. Really broken.

DangerousDave_87 wrote:
I haven't seen this incident, but when Vettel lost control and left the track, did it look like he kept his foot planted on the gas as he rejoined the track? If he did, then there's no argument. That's a desperate attempt to hold position after a fuck up. If he forced Hamilton into an evasive maneuver, then i'd deem that unsafe. That's a pretty reasonable penalty. Easily avoided by not fucking up.

Listening to the footage you can clearly hear Vettel's revs go up pretty much at the moment he leaves the grass and for me that's what creates the oversteer that causes him to force Hamilton to hit the brakes and avoid a crash.

And this is why I can't agree with @AaronTurner's assessment, it was how Vettel came back onto the track which was dangerous not what was happening when he left it. There are track limits for a reason, on a true road circuit the penalty for exceeding those limits is crashing and being out of the race, at this corner that wasn't the case. If you want to decide track limits don't matter we can just rebrand it all as rallycross and get on with our lives.

Re. Formula 1 being rubbish since 2005, I don't remember it being that much better beforehand, god knows why I've been watching it for 30 odd years.

It's pretty much the first incident I've seen where the majority of past and present drivers have gone "that's bullshit, there was nothing else he could have done". I'm inclined to agree with them. It's easy to sit and watch it frame by frame, and forget all this happened over the space of about 2 seconds.

Regardless he made an error and would have lost position. Rather than the 5 seconds he should have been made to allow Lewis to pass then try to take it back. At least it would be in his control to win from there.

I think the point for me is that it's another time that stewards have had a significant impact on the outcome of a race. When it boils down to it, it was just a racing incident. Regardless of fault it was two drivers driving to the max, no one crashed. We should be able to have racing incidents and loss of control without penalties, it's ridiculous.

I'm gonna go with the fairly large volume of people who have actually driven an F1 car in situations like that one and spoken out against the incident. It's as unanimous an agreement as you're likely to see over such a controversial moment really.

gang_of_bitches wrote:
It's an entirely subjective term and an evolving one. 30 years ago a wheel coming loose and flying into the crowd was just a racing incident, now it would be grounds for abandoning a race.

Mate, I'm not going to argue the toss on a term that's used regularly throughout motorsport. I'll accept you think there is blame, my opinion is a little different.

SolidSCB wrote:
I'm gonna go with the fairly large volume of people who have actually driven an F1 car in situations like that one and spoken out against the incident. It's as unanimous an agreement as you're likely to see over such a controversial moment really.

You don't think maybe a lot of those drivers have a vested interest in being controversial? "The rules were applied as they are written" is hardly the kind of hot take that's going to make anyone give a shit what you say in the modern media environment. The Sky Sports F1 pundits definitely need something even vaguely exciting to punctuate fairly processional races.

gang_of_bitches wrote:
It's an entirely subjective term and an evolving one. 30 years ago a wheel coming loose and flying into the crowd was just a racing incident, now it would be grounds for abandoning a race.

It would still be a racing incident. A racing incident is an incident that arises in the general course of racing. Hence the term "racing incident". This is opposed to an incident which has been caused by contrivance of a team and/or driver.

Mate, I'm not going to argue the toss on a term that's used regularly throughout motorsport. I'll accept you think there is blame, my opinion is a little different.

Can't argue with that, I'm really not trying to be a dick, I just think the likes of Brundle use it so liberally to mean "I think this is fine no matter what the rules say" that it becomes pointless. But that has far more to do with my feelings about Martin Brundle than anything else.

I think we can all agree it has made a truly shit season just a little bit shitter. You could tell the championship was a complete write off after about 3 races so this is a further nail in the coffin.

France will suit Mercedes to a tee so we can all look forward to business as usual next time.